The Transit Method Is the Primary Way of Detecting Planets

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The transit method is our primary way of detecting these things. When the object passes, occludes the source of light just a tiny bit,. And from that, we can infer something about its mass and size and geometry. But this is a super far away. How many pixels of information do we have? Basically, how high resolution is the signal that we can get about these occlusions? You're right in your description. I think just to build upon that a little bit more, it might be almost like your vision is completely blurry. You have an extreme eye prescription, and so you can't resolve anything. Everything is just blurs.

David Kipping is an astronomer at Columbia University, director of the Cool Worlds Lab, and host of the Cool Worlds YouTube channel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(05:10) – Habitable exoplanets
(15:30) – Alien life in our Solar System
(27:20) – Starship
(31:28) – James Webb Space Telescope
(44:47) – Binary planets
(55:04) – Exomoons and Kepler-1625b
(1:08:34) – Discoveries of alien life
(1:22:15) – Aliens
(2:08:43) – Oort clouds
(2:19:30) – Future of astronomy
(2:32:45) – Alpha Centauri
(2:45:03) – Kardashev scale
(2:56:41) – AI and space exploration
(3:13:37) – Great Filter
(3:24:51) – Colonization of Mars
(3:31:35) – Simulation hypothesis
(3:43:48) – Advice for young people
(3:48:06) – Meaning of life